


Calculated Misunderstanding

by Sealie



Series: sga/traders [8]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Traders (TV 1995)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-10
Updated: 2006-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:05:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sealie/pseuds/Sealie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stargate Atlantis/Traders crossover no' 8 [voyage par mer segment]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calculated Misunderstanding

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG  
> Spoilers: none  
> Betas: LKY and Klostes – different gals who find different things

**Calculated Misunderstanding**   
**  
by Sealie   
**

At the knock, which could only be described as timid, Elizabeth Weir hit control+S on her notebook computer and pushed it aside. Folding her hands together, she set them on the desk blotter and found a smile.

The door to her bland SGC-assigned office did not open.

“Come in?” she finally called.

The door opened a crack. A shy voice drifted through, “Rodney said that you wanted to see me?”

“Mr. Jansky?” She stood, quickly skirting around the desk to get to the door. Pulling the door open revealed a hunched up figure topped by a SGA-issued boonie hat -- the type that Daniel Jackson used to favour before he had found his ‘cool’.

“Hullo,” Grant said quietly, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the floor.

Elizabeth ducked her head, trying to see under the brim. The hat was pulled down over his ears. Long lashes framed blue-blue eyes so like Rodney’s. She had been told that Mr. Jansky looked liked Rodney but this was almost unbelievable.

“Please come in.” Elizabeth made sure that her tone was warm. She cupped his elbow, intending to guide. Flinching, Grant moved away. Pretending not to notice, she smoothly gestured to the sofa at right angles to her desk. “Would you like to sit down?”

Grant scurried away, jumping onto the sofa and pressing back into the cushions. He pulled his knees up against his chest and kept his head down.

Carefully, Elizabeth sat on the furthest edge of the sofa, giving the poor man as much space as possible. Grant was a huddled up ball of fear. And this was the data analyst that John and Rodney recommended should join them on Atlantis? Oh, she knew that Grant needed protection, but it seemed cruel to take this terrified… child to where the Wraith threatened.

“I’m sorry.” He gulped. “I’ve had a bad weekend.”

“Yes, I’m sorry to hear that.” She winced at the triteness of her words. “How are you feeling now?”

Pulling at the cuffs of his over-large cardigan, Grant drew them over his bandaged wrists.

“Sheppard and Carson and…uhm… Cousin Rodney have been very nice.”

“Do you understand what happened?”

Grant snorted under his breath. “The NID wanted me. Or The Trust. It’s because I can see patterns. Rodney wants me to find the patterns in the Ancients’ Database so I can tell their stories.” He lifted his head a fraction, and Elizabeth saw the tip of a pugnacious chin. “Everyone always wants something.”

“The question is, Grant -- can I call you Grant?”

“It’s my name,” he said brightly, and the head came up another fraction of an inch.

“The question is: what do you want?”

That garnered a full head lift. For a bare instance, he looked at her directly. Then his gaze drifted away, finding something of interest on the plain carpet. Uncurling fractionally, he set his feet on the floor, carefully placing his hands on his knees. His posture was as relaxed as a debutante at her first ball and he radiated enough tension enough to thicken the air.

“I want to be safe. I’m not safe here. I can do things, even if it hasn’t been proven to you and everyone here at the SGC. Although I did fix the calibration problem with the Lorentzian intra universe bridge, didn’t I?” Grant smiled crookedly, so much like Rodney that Elizabeth drew in a surprised breath.

“Rodney mentioned that,” Elizabeth confirmed. “He mentioned it several times when he was telling me about this plan.”

“Rodney wants me to be safe. I work ‘differently’ and now your NID -- when I say ‘your’, I mean it’s the American Government not you – wants me. When I say NID, I think that I mean The Trust. I went into the SGC database and The Trust is formed of ex-NID members. Although, given that they tried such a blatant kidnapping attempt, instead of a subversive strike when I was back at home, indicates that there is another player. It was very uncharacteristic and wasn’t well thought out. Mr. General Jack O’Neill didn’t let me finish my analysis, though.” He lapsed into silence.

“Do you want to go to Atlantis?” Elizabeth asked directly.

“Mr. Jinx will have to come. I don’t think I can go without Mr. Jinx.”

“Mr. Jinx?” Elizabeth asked. They couldn’t take another person, least of all one of Mr. Jansky’s friends.

“My cat.” Grant coughed. “Rodney’s cat. He told me that I had to look after him. He’s had all his shots.”

“Shots?” Elizabeth echoed.

Grant rocked in her direction conspiratorially, almost but not quite bumping his shoulder into hers. “He’s also had the--” his fingers made the snip-snip of scissors, “--so he’ll be safe. No baby kittens. But don’t tell him, he’s sensitive.”

Elizabeth slipped off the couch, shuffling on her knees she moved into Grant’s direct line of sight. Slowly, so slowly, she reached out and gently placed her hands over his clenched fists.

“How are you feeling, Grant? Carson was very concerned about you. He said that you had a nasty shock and you weren’t at your best.”

Grant tucked his chin deep into the collar of his buttoned up blue cardigan and found that interesting region on the carpet to the left of Elizabeth’s knee. He shrugged, shoulders almost coming up to touch the brim of his ridiculous green hat.

“I can go to Atlantis. I’ll get better.”

“We’re going in less than forty-eight hours; it doesn’t give you a lot of time to think about it. It has to be your decision, Grant, not Rodney’s or Colonel Sheppard’s.”

Grant flicked a little sideways glance at her; the eyes were perceptive, engaged, and then the brim came down and he was hidden from view.

“Mr. Jansky, Grant, Atlantis is a wonderful place, but there are problems there.” Intent on her words she had to concentrate not to squeeze the vulnerable man’s hands. “We’ve angered some people called the Wraith, and sometimes they try to hurt us. There’s marines and members of the Air Force there who protect the scientists, but sometimes it gets very scary. It might not be the best place for you.”

The boonie covered head nodded sagely. “But I don’t think that I’ll be safe anywhere else.”

What could she say but ‘yes’ in the face of that innocent declaration?

  
~*~

Rodney threw his hat on the plush armchair in the corner of the VIP quarters.

“How’s Grant?” he asked Sheppard.

Curled up on another armchair by Grant’s bed, Sheppard glanced up from his book to the huddled up figure in the centre of the king-sized bed. Grant slept under two embroidered quilts. His face pushed into a soft pillow. Only the vulnerable line of his neck and the soft curve of his jaw and cheek were visible. A faint red flush touched his cheek where the adhesive had stripped his skin raw.

“No nightmares,” Sheppard reported, setting the book aside and balancing it on the arm of the chair. “I think Mr. Jinx helps.”

Rodney cocked his head. He couldn’t see the cat who had abandoned him at the drop of a hat for his little cousin.

Sheppard pointed at a quilt covered lump.

“Jinx is under the quilt?” Rodney asked, as he crouched by the mini bar. He extracted a miniature whisky. Sheppard raised two fingers so Rodney grabbed another three miniatures. If he was going to get shit-faced he was going to do it on the SGC’s buck. Curling his nose up at the supplied plastic tumblers, he poured two generous doubles of Glenlivet. “You want ice?”

“Yeah.”

“Philistine.” But he extracted a cube from the ice tray and plopped it in the beaker. It did not tinkle satisfactorily. Sheppard leaned out of his chair and snagged his glass.

The first mouthful burned its way, warmingly all the way down Rodney’s gullet. Smiling, he crossed the room and flopped on the armchair, planting his butt on the hat and swinging his feet on the edge of Grant’s bed.

Sheppard swirled the whisky in the tumbler, watching the amber liquid coat the sides for a bare instance before sliding back down.

“You packed? Ready to go back on the Daedalus?” Sheppard asked.

Rodney shrugged. “Mostly. I’ll send a marine to go and collect my goodies from Borders. I need to get back to my apartment and grab a couple of things. I have to get a couple of officers to pack down Grant’s apartment, and ship his computers to either the SGC or an approved site where the Daedalus can beam them up.”

“Elizabeth’s approved his inclusion in the mission?”

“Hmmm.” Rodney nodded and took a mouthful of whisky. “She’s got her reservations, but knows at the moment it is the best place for him. I’ve also got to check the Atlantis’ hardware manifesto. I mean, okay, now we have a link with the SGC and Earth, but I don’t want to get to Atlantis and find that they have only given us three Serial Cray super computers."

“Yeah, that would be a hardship.” Sheppard held the glass, looking through it at Rodney. “So if you haven’t been checking your geek shopping list what have you been up to?”

“This and that. Chat with Elizabeth. I pointed out where Sam – that’s Colonel Carter to you – has made basic errors in her mapping of the spatial relationship between solar flares and the magnetic topology of the active regions of the sun.”

“Why do that?” Sheppard took a big hit from his whisky.

“If this is Earth.” Rodney held up his middle finger and Sheppard toasted him back with his tumbler. “Your Glenlivet is P2X-555, and the bed is the sun and there is a solar flare--” He flipped the edge of the quilt with his foot making a tiny wave, “--the resultant flux in the energy, as the stargate forms the wormhole between the two points, can result in an intra-dimensional bridge due to delay-changes in the nonconservative gravitational field.”

“Fascinating,” Sheppard said dryly.

“Ancient-designed DHDs have protocols to avoid problems of this nature. The mock-up of the DHD that they have here is barely even adequate to form stable wormholes; I’m surprised that they haven’t had more problems than they have had.” Rodney sniffed.

“And what did Colonel Carter have to say when you pontificated at her?”

The door opened, interrupting Rodney’s planned witty repartee, and Carson slipped into the room. Grant whimpered and Sheppard immediately leaned over to stroke his shorn, tufty hair to ease him back into slumber.

“How’s he doing?” Carson asked. Unfurling his medical kit on the quilt, he perched on the edge of Grant’s bed on Sheppard’s side.

“He’s been sleeping a lot,” Sheppard reported.

Carson took out his thermometer and set the sensor in Grant’s ear. He took the reading with an absent nod. A tug and a roll deftly freed Grant from his cocoon. Lifting Grant’s t-shirt and then setting prongs of his stethoscope in his ears, he listened at various points on Grant’s broad back.

Rodney drew a sip of whisky, holding it in the well of his tongue to allow it to evaporate and caress his senses. Enjoying the warming curl of the vapour was a guilty pleasure in which he didn’t indulge often.

Finally, Carson straightened and bestowed an absent pat on his patient’s shoulder. “I’ll check his blood pressure later; don’t want to disturb him too much. His temperature is fine and his lungs are clear. Has he said anything yet?”

Sheppard shook his head. “Nothing, I even asked if he wanted some chocolate. Galaxy or Lindt. And nothing, nada, not a jot.”

Carson heaved out a sad sigh. “I guess when those bastards gagged him, they told him to ‘shut up or else’ and he’s taken it to heart.”

“Will he come ‘round?” Sheppard asked intently. “I mean, start talking again?”

“I expect so,” Carson said as he tucked Grant back under his covers. “He needs to feel safe.”

“You want a whisky?” Sheppard held his glass up.

Carson checked his watch before responding. “Yeah, I’m off duty. Not that I was on duty, but you know, there’s so much to do before we head back. One whisky won’t kill me and it will probably help.”

As Sheppard raided the fridge for another whisky, Carson turned his attention to Rodney.

“Why are you wearing Grant’s cardigan, Rodney?”

Rodney smiled. “Oh, no particular reason.”

 _fin_   



End file.
